Like every female on this planet, I have my hang ups about my body, sometimes it takes days to break that spell (and normally a spanking from my heavenly father) other times I quickly rethink my thoughts. My hang ups started early, though my outward appearance was never stressed at home while I was growing up, there came a point in mid elementary school that my outward looks started to interfere with how I was treated by my teachers and classmates….and the issues I faced continued into middle and high school. It seems that the world’s answer for all of the bodily issues we face is to eat less (and better) and exercise more, but with the birth of the BMI chart standards many (including those in the medical profession) have forgotten that there is no cookie cutter solution to what is a healthy weight and what is not….I have been told by a dream job of mine that I would be allowed to follow the job until my weight was down to a max of 120 (for those who know me, know me; you know that my body would never support that low of a weight), so I’m working at different place….I shovel well over 500 lbs of horse poo in less than 3 and 1/2 hours, 3 days a week..and sometime I do even more of that when I pick up and extra barn job…not only to i shovel poo, but the hay bales alone weigh about 50+ lbs, the feed bags that we get every 2 weeks weigh 50 lbs each (12 bags at a time) and the smallest horse that I deal with is about 500-800 lbs, the largest weighs in at about 1200-1500lbs. I’d like to see a lot of those bone thin models that walk the runways and who are espoused as being beautiful and healthy do my job for just one day.

Everytime I go to my doctor when I’m sick they “talk” about my weight and diet, and every time they also ask about my families medical history, which includes thyroid issues, and anemia (which being a female I’m 2xs as like to get that due to natural things that my body goes through)… that never seems to be listened to….I have friends who suffer from other medical conditions that they were born with that makes them more prone to being over weight and yet for some reason people tell to eat less and exercise more, when people don’t consider if we might have medical problems and then open their uneducated mouths the words cut us just as much as a knife.

I played with Barbies growing up but I KNEW that it was a doll, and not an actual representation of real people, but with today’s society when plastic surgery is the answer to all prayers kids are getting lost in the message, they see the people they adore going in for a nose job because the idol has a slight bump on the nose, or the idol is 16 yrs old with a c cup chest so into an office they go and out they walk with an “impressive” set of dd’s. Part of the blame lies in the media, part of it lies in the church for failing in its job to lead people, part lies in parents who expect perfection out of imperfect people. Part lies in the medical profession for giving so many mixed studies as to what is/is not healthy and part of the blame lies with companies who are willing to exploit human weakness by claiming to bottle true beauty.

Am I content with my body, ha! far from it… I admit I can stand to lose a fair amount of weight but I’m not willing to “diet” in the general term, I’ve tried that before and though I did lose weight I also stopped having things that at 12/13 I should have had, and after a few months of reprieve from that torture which I must endure for the time being, I began to gain the weight back and started right back up.

So where do I go from here, obviously can not knock sense into people, nor can I tell them to stop spewing diarrhea of the mouth. Until there is more acceptance in what is classified as healthy/not healthy all it seems I can do is live my life, continue working and mock the skinny people for becoming zippers when they stick their tongue out and turning sideways (j/k). Are there ways that could give my self-esteem a boost when I need it, sure. Guys if you have female friends or girlfriends tell them that they are drop dead beautiful for no apparent reason (and remind us on a regular basis that you think we are attractive, we normally have the most body issues when a girl we think is more pretty than we are is near by, so NO checking out that cute girl while we can see you doing it), guys if you go to a dance and see “the fat girl” standing in a corner go ask her to dance with you. Send flowers to a female friend (you don’t have to put your name on the card). For me it would be little things like that that would mean the most, each girl is different but it’s worth a try.

So please be aware of what you say and think about whether the person you’re talking about might have an underlying condition(s) that you can not see.